Installed Spybot 1.5: No longer able to run other programs

[PidaB]

Hi,

I've got some trouble after installing Spybot 1.5 on my notebook (Windows XP Home SP 2, 1 GB RAM, Intel Centrino w/ 1.63 MHz):
At first it took more than two minutes to load the programm, so I installed the 'patch' (new SpybotSD-exe and new include file). It worked.
But now I'm not able to open any other programs. When I try to run, for example, Firefox, Spybot will open. If Spybot is already running and I try to run another program, nothing happens.

I tried to uninstall Sypbot, but the same problem occurs when trying to open the system control. So I moved the Spybot files to another folder and tried to run some programs again and was presented messages like 'Which program do you want to usw to run firefox.exe?'. I also received a message like 'Couldn't find C:/Windows/System32/rundll.exe'. Unfortunetely I'm not able to reproduce this message, as I read in between that rundll.exe is Spyware or something similiar while rundll32.exe belongs to Windows. I'm not sure about the exact name of the file.

What can I do? I'm using the computer now and was able to open Firefox by clicking help/website in the menu of Spybot. A reboot does'nt help. When I reboot the system, my autostart programs (NHC, Antivir) don't open as well.

Can someone help me?

Thank you
Pida

[king malcolm]

Can you do a system restore back to a point immediately before updating Spybot ?

[PidaB]

No, unfortunately I'm not able to open it as well - and I don't know how old the latest restore point is.

EDIT: I can open videos and mp3 with both Winamp and Windows Media Player. An automatic update from Antivir also opened and seemed to work. I can also open OpenOffice files by clicking on the corresponding files - but not by clicking, for example, swriter.exe.

Thank you
Pida

[king malcolm]

Can you re-boot and immediately after POST, start and continue to tap F8 key, and when the blue screen dialogue opens, select "last known good configuration" and hit enter key.
Windowsmay sort itself out, at least get you system restore back.

[PidaB]

Thanks again.

The 'last known good configuration' didn't show any obvious differences. I also tried the secured mode (German: abgesicherter Modus) without sucess. But at least I found out the problem only concerns my account, the administrator profile works without these problems.

I also found out I can open any program (at least any I tried) by clicking some file and opening the 'Open with' dialogue. I just cannot directly open exe-files...

Pida

[king malcolm]

When you are in the administrators account, can you get to system restore, or failing that can you uninstall Spybot (you update download may have been corrupted in some way)

[PidaB]

I could uninstall Spybot by 'opening' some file with unins000.exe. But this didn't help, so I tried some other advice I found on the net.
Finally resetting the file association exe -> application SEVERAL TIMES (because the association got lost again) helped.